Stay Tuned: A solid ‘Nancy Drew’ adaptation premieres on The CW

Melissa Crawley More Content Now

Tuesday

Oct 8, 2019 at 6:47 AM

This week, it’s competition shows and ghost hunters, a black ops origin story and a new take on a familiar teen detective.

Dispatches: Weekly TV newsHGTV’s reboot of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” has added LeAnn Rimes to the line-up. Rimes will join host Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“Modern Family”) as a special guest star in one of the show’s 10 new episodes, which are set to air in early 2020.

Phil Keoghan, the host of “The Amazing Race,” wants to celebrate the skills of those who sweat outside the gym. His new competition show, “Tough As Nails,” will test competitors for strength, endurance, agility and mental toughness in real world challenges. The show will premiere on CBS and will be holding a nationwide casting search in November.

Contenders: Shows to keep on your radarPlucky teenage sleuth Nancy Drew gets another adaptation. This contemporary take, simply titled “Nancy Drew” (Oct. 9, The CW, 9 p.m. ET), has ghosts, casual sex and plenty of teen angst. The 2019 version of Nancy (Kennedy McMann) is still a champion of the truth but is also feeling a little lost after the death of her mother, has a rocky relationship with her father and has given up investigating while she waits to reapply for college. Of course, the no-more-snooping doesn’t last long. It’s a solid re-imagining with some intrigue and lots of potential.

Travel Channel offers some pre-Halloween spookiness with a pair of series premieres on Oct. 11. “Ghost Nation” (10 p.m. ET) follows three paranormal investigators as they help ghost hunters crack their toughest cases. It’s followed by “Hometown Horror” (11 p.m. ET), which explores scary tales from communities across the country.

RuPaul brings his fabulousness to the United Kingdom with the premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK” (Oct. 11, Logo, 8 p.m. ET).

For fans of true crime, it’s the premiere of new series “The DNA of Murder With Paul Holes” (Oct. 12, Oxygen, 8 p.m. ET). Holes is a retired cold case investigator whose work helped to identity a suspect in the Golden State Killer case. The show follows Holes as he brings his expertise to law enforcement agencies to assist with unsolved cases.

If you watched the first season of “The Purge” and wondered about the aftermath of a 12-hour all-crime-is-legal-spree, season two has some ideas (Oct. 15, USA, 9 p.m. ET). The action begins on Purge night but then explores what that world looks like the rest of the year. Following “The Purge” is the premiere of new series, “Treadstone” (Oct. 15, 10 p.m. ET). Taking a deep dive into a shadowy world first introduced in the Jason Bourne films, the series is an origin story of the CIA black ops program that turns its recruits into nearly perfect assassins. The first season follows the sleeper agents around the world as they are mysteriously “awakened” to carry out their deadly orders.

Report Card: A look at ratings winners and losersWinners: Fox announced a full-season order of “Prodigal Son.”

Losers: “Almost Family” debuted weak, despite a strong lead-in from “The Masked Singer.”Melissa Crawley is the author of “Mr. Sorkin Goes to Washington: Shaping the President on Television’s ‘The West Wing.’” She has a Ph.D. in media studies and is a member of the Television Critics Association. To comment on Stay Tuned, email her at staytuned@outlook.com or follow her on Twitter at @mcstaytuned.

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